Traditionally, typical medical and surgical procedures requiring infusion or pumping of liquids to the body of a patient or to a medical or surgical instrument to perform a medical procedure utilized relatively low liquid pressure, for example liquid pressures below 100 psig. Accordingly, typical medical and surgical liquid infusion or pumping devices are not configured for or capable of generating very high liquid pressures, for example liquid pressures above 1,000 psig and up to as high as about 50,000 psig. Such traditional medical infusion and pumping applications include, for example, infusion of medications to a body of a patient, pumping of saline or other solutions to irrigation instruments for surgical lavage, pumping of blood and other physiological fluids during surgical or medical procedures, etc. A wide variety of pumping and infusions systems designed and configured for such applications, many including detachable and disposable pumping cartridges, are well known and readily available. Such pumping systems and cartridges include those employing peristaltic or tubing pumps, a variety of diaphragm and collapsible chamber pumps, and low pressure piston pumps.
Pumping systems utilized for generating very high fluid pressures, for example in the above-mentioned high pressure range, have typically been restricted primarily to industrial pumping applications. Such pumping systems typically employ fluid pumps that are not well suited for medical or surgical use because, for example, they are mechanically complex and/or expensive or difficult to manufacture and assemble, are constructed from materials or employ working fluids that are not physiologically or biologically compatible, employ pumping components that are not disposable or detachable from an expensive reusable pump drive system, employ pumping components and that are not easily cleanable and/or sterilizable.
Typical pumping systems from neither of the above-mentioned categories (i.e., relatively low pressure medical infusion and pumping systems, and high pressure industrial pumping systems) is particularly well suited for applications involving medical or surgical liquid pumping requiring high pumped liquid pressures, for example above 1,000 psig up to about 50,000 psig. Such applications include the pumping of liquids to surgical handpieces for performing high pressure liquid jet cutting and/or ablation in performing minimally invasive or open surgical procedures for example as described in the Applicants' U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,871,462; 5,944,686; 6,216,573, and 6,375,635, and for delivering a high pressure liquid to a surgical instruments employing a liquid jet powered motor for powering surgical cutting and other surgical tools, for example as described in the Applicants' co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/480,500.
Accordingly, there remains a need in the art for pumping systems and methods for pumping and infusing high pressure liquids and fluids for performing medical and surgical treatments, which employ pumping cartridges with improved disposability, sterilizability, mechanical simplicity, ease of manufacture, and/or low per-unit cost. The present invention provides, in many embodiments, such improved pumping systems and cartridges, and further provides methods for their use in medical or surgical pumping or infusing procedures.